The Women of Gatsby

The women play an even more controversial role in The Great Gatsby. They bring elegance, beauty, athleticism, affairs, fights and death to this novel. The three women that play the most influential roles in The Great Gatsby are Myrtle Wilson, Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan.

We get the feeling that Myrtle Wilson is not an especially smart woman. Strung along by Tom, Myrtle is convinced that he loves her and would leave his wife for her if he could. The whole bit about Daisy being a Catholic and not believing in divorce is, as Nick points out, not remotely true. Because she is unhappy in her marriage to George, Myrtle is drawn to Tom for certain specific reasons. George is passive, but Tom is controlling and authoritative. Myrtle puts up with Tom’s physical abuse because she equates it with masculinity – a quality that in her mind is lacking in her husband Myrtle also adds to the novel’s themes of class and wealth. She insists that she married below her caste, that she believed certain things about George until they got married and it was too late.

Nick might end up "halfway in love" with Jordan, but he consistently describes her as cynical, having seen too much and heard too much to be fooled by anybody. And perhaps because of her dishonesty, she is aware more than anybody else in the book that appearances are deceiving. Jordan is possibly the least important of all the major characters in the book, yet she provides an important contrast to Daisy Buchanan. She appears first in the Buchanan’s home, a young woman with too much time on her hands. In some ways, she epitomizes the concept of "ennui" – she is bored to tears, except for her active sports career in golf. Cynical and hard, she cheated to win her first golf tournament. This in itself is evidence of her practicality. Ultimately, she and Nick end up "together" (in a fashion) and Nick mentions how grateful he is that she is not like Daisy. That is, she is not the kind of girl who holds onto the past, a girl "too wise ever to carry well-forgotten dreams from age to age."

Daisy’s beautiful, mysterious, flirtatious, intriguing, delightful, thrilling, sensuous, famously “full of money” voice is one of the central images in this novel; characters from Nick to Jordan to Gatsby all comment upon the magic of this remarkable instrument. Daisy’s voice is full, not just of money, but of promises – there’s something about it that tells the listener that wonderful things are on the horizon. Daisy’s voice is irresistibly seductive, and all the other characters are drawn to her because of it. Daisy, like Gatsby, is something of a dreamer. One of the things they share is their idealized image of their relationship the first time around – and this rose-colored view makes everything in the present seem dull and flat in comparison. Daisy’s view of the past is both wistful and cynical at the same time. While Daisy recognizes that society’s pressures are forces to be reckoned with, she also longs for the innocent period of her “white girlhood,” before she was forced/forced herself into her marriage to Tom. Though the Daisy of the present has come to realize that more often than not, dreams don’t come true, she still clings to the hope that they sometimes can.

Read more about the lovely women of Gatsby at www.shmoop.com!